Like most Americans, I took part in the festivities over America’s 250th birthday.I found it quite remarkable to reflect on that number.
On one hand, America is 250 years old, with so much history.On the other hand, America is still a baby compared to many other countries.
I found myself having to pause and think about what was nagging me about that number.Two hundred and fifty years.Then the answer came to me.
Two hundred and fifty years also marks how long race has played a role in this nation — and still does.Those who say race is as much a part of America as apple pie are not entirely wrong.
We may not have the Klan riding through the streets, but I’m not talking about that kind of racism.I’m talking about government-sponsored racism.
Our government has always tipped the scales when it comes to race.I found myself asking on America’s 250th birthday: Will we ever be free of our own government using race to divide us?Here on the South Side, people like to point to redlining and blockbusting to explain what happened to our neighborhoods.
And those things were real, and they were wrong.But that explanation conveniently stops in the 1950s, as if nothing happened after.
Most of what devastated this community happened after, not from the 1960s backward, but from the 1960s forward.One well-intentioned program after another, engineered far from these streets by people who never had to live with the results, managed to produce a great deal of white virtue and precious little opportunity for the people who live here.
I have watched the wreckage of that experiment my whole life.And I have learned this: there is no solution to be found in race.
We do not find our minds in our skin.AMERICA’S NEXT 250 YEARS DEPEND ON PASSING FAITH AND FREEDOM TO OUR CHILDRENSo when I reflect on America turning 250, that number lands heavier than a birthday should.Two hundred and fifty years of race in America, and people still keep shoving it down our throats, as if it is...